Fingerprint sensing Samsung Galaxy S5 all-but-confirmed

By Simon Thomas on 18th February 2014

Galaxy S5's fingerprint sensor will do more than just unlocking the smartphone.

Samsung will unveil the Samsung Galaxy S5 on February 24th at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. That much we can be pretty sure about and as we get closer to its official unveiling more details about the smartphone are leaking out.

Today's big news is that the Galaxy S5 will have a fingerprint sensor built into its home button. That's according to inside sources reporting to the folks over at SamMobile - who are normally pretty reliable.

The new fingerprint sensor will apparently be able to register 8 separate fingers, with each able to be customised to do a certain task, such as open a specific app or folder. You will be required to select one of your prints to unlock the Galaxy S5, which is apparently done by swiping down on the home button.

A home button fingerprint sensor, like Apple's Touch ID Sensor, seems like a simpler and more sensible solution anyway. But the Korean company are likely to attract criticism from certain parties for copying their rivals again - but we'll be pleased if its included because we've grown to love the iPhone 5S's TouchID sensor.

Samsung's Galaxy S5 is rumoured to have a 5.2-inch 2K display (1440x2560) pixels, giving it a 560 pixels-per-inch (ppi) rating. While, it's expected to come with either a quad-core 2.5GHz (4G LTE model) or a Octa-core Exynos processor (3G model) backed up by 3GB of RAM.

Other rumours specs include a 20 mega-pixel camera, 2 mega-pixel front-facing snapper, 3000mAH battery and Android KitKat (4.4). With the smartphone due to go on sale in April after being announced next week (February 24th to be precise).